Moomintroll, the Moomins’ young son, is naive and endearing Jansson didn’t claim the character as auto-biographical but she did admit that her depression that developed living in Europe during the World War II prompted her to create a character who could be excited about life again. Many believe buoyant Moominpappa and demure, grounded Moominmamma from her comic series to be inspired by her family. Jansson grew up in a bohemian household of other artists and creatives, her father a sculptor and her mother a graphic artist. Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen Tove Jansson, Family, 1942, Oil, 89 x 116 cm, Private Collection. “Painting was something very private and precious for her, and being recognized as painter was her biggest dream,” the exhibition’s curator, Sointu Fritze, told Observer, noting that Jansson’s art has shown quite broadly in international exhibitions but had, until now, been mostly Moomin-related material, either illustrations or cartoons, not paintings or other artworks by her. British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent. Tove Jansson, Comic strip Moomin on the Riviera, 1955. Boasting 150 works ranging from self portraits to landscapes, her Surrealist paintings from the 1930s to her abstract works from the ’60s, along with various other drawings and early sketches of the Moomin characters, the show is the first major retrospective of the artist’s career in the U.K.- despite the fact that the Moomin comic strip debuted in London’s The Evening Standard in the 1950s. Now an exhibition at London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery is giving one of the 20th century’s most beloved illustrators her fair due as a painter. Though she was best known for her delightfully squishy, hippo-esque cartoon creatures known as Moomins, which debuted in 1945 and were featured in a series of nine books over the years and a long-running comic strip, Jansson’s passion wasn’t illustration-it was painting. “Maybe my passion is nothing special, but at least it’s mine.” So wrote Finnish author and illustrator Tove Jansson in her book, Traveling Light. Jari Kuusenaho/Tampere Art Museum/MoominCharacters Moomin Museum, Tampere Art Museum Moominvalley Collection. Tove Jansson, Cover for a comic book, 1957.

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